Engineering students aiming to become specialists in cloud computing, storage, disaster recovery and big data may avail of a training and certification program being offered by the EMC Academic Alliance.
The EMC Academic Alliance is an EMC initiative to collaborate with the leading universities and colleges to address the emerging knowledge gap brought about by the growing volume and complexity of digital information.
The four key course offerings of the Academic Alliance are Information Storage and Management; Cloud Infrastructure and Services; Data Science and Big Data Analytics; and Backup Recovery Systems and Architecture. These courses ensure that students can acquire highly valuable knowledge and skills that prepare them to face the current and future challenges in IT infrastructure in particular and in the IT industry in general.
Krishna Kant, Head of EMC Academic Alliance, South Asia and Russia
To be eligible in the program, applicants must meet the following qualifications: must be at least third year college taking up Engineering; must have a strong understanding of database and servers; must have programming skills and high grades in mathematics and analytics.
Introduced three years ago in the Philippines, the EMC Academic Alliance (EAA) program offers an “open” curriculum-based education for students and courseware to faculty at no cost. It helps train the next-generation of IT professionals to build a foundation for data analytics while they are still in school, focusing on the opportunities and challenges brought by the growing amount of data.
Locally, EMC has established academic alliance with 47 educational institutions including De La Salle University and AMA.
Krishna Kant, Head of EMC Academic Alliance, South Asia and Russia, claims the program has a total of 600 students enrolled this year. By next year, the total number of enrollment is expected to increase to 1,000 students. Currently, the program collaborates only with private educational institutions.
The rapid growth in information is adding greater demand for IT professionals with qualified analytic and data skills in the field of data storage. The EAA is playing a significant role in addressing these challenges by honing the IT skills of qualified students or professionals.
According to EMC, the EAA will not only address the issue of skills gap but also add value to the IT talent pool of the Philippines. It will help the fresh engineering graduates in developing the required skill sets in leading areas of IT to make them industry ready. We believe that this program will go a long way in improving the employability of students in the country and give them a head start.
For an educational institution to be eligible in the program, it must be accredited, degree-granting institution of higher education. Its application will be reviewed by the EAA program team for alignment with program goals. The complete membership terms and conditions can be found at http://www.education.EMC.com/AcademicAlliance.
According to Kant, an accredited university or college is provided with free faculty readiness training for the courses they plan to teach. Boasting of huge repository of materials on different areas of technology, the EAA will provide partner-universities access to teaching materials such as course slides, facilitator guide, student exercises and case studies); resources; and discussions in the Faculty Community, an exclusive site for Academic Alliance professors, while receiving substantial discounts on select EMC Proven Professional certification exams.
Students, on the other hand, will be given access to a student resource portal with case studies, white papers, and information storage product simulators to enrich their learning experience. They also receive substantial discounts on select EMC Proven Professional certification exams; and may be qualified to gain valuable experience in leadership roles as EMC ambassadors on campus.
A program member-university is required to report registration data or the number of students per class each term a course is taught. Faculties may also be requested to provide EMC with data and/or feedback on a course implementation and delivery. The data/information may include, without limitation, promotion, instructor performance, feedback for improving EMC courses, and student evaluations. It also must maintain their standing in the program by teaching the approved courses. The minimum requirement is one per 24-month period.
An EMC survey conducted with more than 1,000 IT/Storage managers confirms the need for skills development for new technologies particularly in the field of cloud computing, virtualization, data analytics and storage, and backup architecture.
According to the study, managing storage growth remains the No. 1 “pain point” for 77% of respondents, and more storage will be hosted in private cloud by the end of 2015 rather than in classic environments. Aside from these, IT managers reported hiring plans which indicate staff growth of more than 34% that requires hiring, training, and deployment of capable storage professionals.
A separate survey conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) reveals that 1.7 million cloud computing jobs remained unfilled in 2012 due to lack of training and certification. And by 2018, according to McKinsey, the US faces a shortage of 140,000 – 190,000 IT professionals with analytics expertise, and 1.5 million managers and analysts conversant on big data analytics.
